The Taqwacores

Abstract

Novels are ideal vehicles for learning and teaching about the situation of modern Islam. The narrative form facilitates the reader’s understanding that the pressing questions of contemporary religion are ones faced by human actors in their individual day-to-day lives and cannot (and should not) be generalized to all believers in a given faith everywhere. My own favorite in many years of teaching Islam in the context of an introductory course on “western” religions has been Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure (originally published in French [1962; English translation 1963]), which broaches all of the fundamental tensions of modernity in the African and French contexts. But that book is now distant in time and cultural space, especially for young North American audiences, and stands only, I fear, as a historical portrait of the debate. Kane’s work remains helpful in understanding how matters got to where they are today, but perhaps less so for engaging its readers in cultural debates immediately relevant to their lives ...